Today the Associated Press (AP) and NowPublic
announced that they have agreed to a deal that will bring NowPublic's
citizen content into AP's news gathering network. According to the
press release, the two companies will work together to explore ways of
involving NowPublic's on-the-ground network of news contributors with
AP's breaking news coverage – increasing the worlds access to news as
it happens.
To put this into perspective, on any given day, more than half the
world's population sees news from AP – so this is an unparalleled
distribution opportunity for citizen created content and contributors to NowPublic.

NowPublic has been a leader in the citizen journalism revolution. For a cornerstone of the mainstream media to open its gates to citizen journalists is revolutionary for them (if rather late from the perspective of those of us on the outside of those gates). Good on the AP!

Now that DC has awakened to the reality of a more engaged online populace, not only are we seeing online announcements of candidacy (or candidacy exploration, heh), but also the beginnings of what is pretty much inevitable:

Negative campaigning in blog threads.

Yes, not only will we have wingnut fundamentalist suicide blog-bombers hitting Democrat-leaning blogs (and no doubt the agitator liberals picking at sites like Little Green Boogers), but also same-party partisans trying to score points in comments on various political blogs.

We saw a little of it in the last election on the various echo chamber sites, but now we're almost certain to see more professional operatives bringing their low-standards previous held only for television advertising into the new media of online interaction.

Oh I can hardly wait for all the new wrinkles this will bring to the karma-points circle jerks on the überblogs of the left.

Is the golden age over? Are we doomed to drag the internet down to the mainstream media advertising level? Personally, as a not-much-of-a-reader-any-more of the so-called A-list blogger/pundits, I don't expect such developments to affect me very much. But who knows? This community blog has known its moments of respectable traffic, and had some pretty incredible contributors breaking out the sharp knives few others will even acknowledge.

Yet it will be interesting how the efforts to manufacture consent in various online communities plays out when the Beltway Pros really get involved.

None of these evaluations are meant as an endorsement, not that anyone cares what I think. I remain an independent, pretty much distrusting everything coming from within two hours' drive from the Mall.

I admit I am curious about how the blog campaigns will be professionalized, though. Todays question: How true is John Edwards' image? Let's sling some comments and pass the time. It's only 21 months and change until election day!

Here's my proposal: Newspapers and wire services need to figure out a way, without running afoul of antitrust laws, to agree to embargo their news content from the free Internet for a brief period -- say, 24 hours -- after it is made available to paying customers. The point is not to remove content from the Internet, but to delay its free release in that venue.

A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information.

I imagine the opposite. Maybe I'm just missing something, but it seems that you don't make information more valuable by making it inaccessible.

Imagine the major Web portals -- Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN -- with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from "mainstream" media and blogosphere musings on yesterday's news. Digital fish wrap. And the portals know from unhappy experience (most recently in the case of Yahoo) just how difficult it is to create original and timely news content themselves.

Just what we need: A less informed populace.

Participating newspapers must be careful to limit their agreement to just one issue: the duration of the embargo. All other competitive issues -- subscription policies, how much to charge for different types of access (print and online) and to whom (consumers and Internet aggregators) -- must be strictly off-limits.

The problem is that the newspapers are trying to force the market to accommodate the business, much like the movie studios and music conglomerates are fighting against internet innovation because it threatens middle-management job security.

What's more, by all accounts, newspapers are still making money. It's just that they aren't the blockbuster earners on Wall Street like pharmaceuticals.

Many years ago, local sports teams decided that television was costing them money, so the NFL passed rules that prevented local games from being aired unless the game was sold out. Then baseball got into the action, selling their games not to the local station but to pay-per-view. The net effect was that fewer local would-be fans got to see their teams. The die-hard fans paid close attention, but the casual fans did not know who was who. Interest in the teams dropped. (Between unavailable games, strikes and the ego sportsmanship of modern athletes, I gave up baseball watching habits forged when I was four years old, watching with my grandmother.)

Now Mr. Scheer encourages newspapers to give in to their fears of the internet, much like sports teams have feared "free" television. If they do that, they will shut out the casual reader — especially the younger generations that represent the newspapers' future market. To hide their calling cards — the latest headlines — behind subscriptions would be to make news organizations invisible to the average user.

That's not going to help any newspaper.

If newspapers want to make more money online, they need to create better value. I don't think the answer is to prevent people from getting free news, but rather to add value, such as enhanced content, in-depth articles, video, high-resolution photography, and place that behind a subscription wall.

After all, you can stop shoplifting by locking the doors, but you won't be doing any business, either.

You know the mainstream media doesn't tell you everything it knows. That's obvious. Some of the reasons why are obvious, too: limited space in newspapers, limited time on news programs, limited resources of news departments, limited number of reporters.... Some things are bound to slip through the cracks.

What this amounts to is a list of 25 stories that alternative media will have to pick up. Come on, bloggers, pick one and write about it. Because the New York Times won't write about it. And Fox News won't talk about it.